There are slews of people who have never been to Kelowna or the Okanagan who say, “So, what’s it like over there?”.

Every summer, pretty much without fail, the valley gets filled with the familiar smell of burning forest combined with a “hey-those-aren’t-clouds” haze. Today, I cruised down Westside Rd. (near Wilson’s Landing) and accidentally drove right into the still-burning forest to see a rescue / water-bucket carrying helicopter. I actually felt drips on my face as the chopper passed right over me.

I decided to snap a few pics and a short video because it’s not often that non-Okanagan-dwellers get to see a forest fire 20 feet from the road. Ya, you could say we’re pretty tough folk over here who fight fires with our bare hands, wrestle bears in our back yards, and drink record-setting amounts of cold beer brewed in the same place we wrestle bears.